


Babe, All We Got Is Time

by alexabarton



Category: Shameless (US)
Genre: Angst and Feels, M/M, Pining
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-03-11
Updated: 2017-03-27
Packaged: 2018-10-02 22:50:57
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,779
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10229522
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alexabarton/pseuds/alexabarton
Summary: Ian left Mickey at the border. This is about their journey back.





	1. Mickey

Four hours.

That's how long it takes before you restart the engine on the crappy old car you stole together. That Ian hotwired. Four hours of sitting in the dirt and blistering heat at the roadside two miles over the Mexican border, sweating balls in floral polyester, holding onto the last of your hope that Ian might change his mind and come follow you, say sorry.  

Say anything but I love you.  

Or goodbye. 

It never happens. And you knew it would never happen, but you sit there anyway, way past the point where you have to give it up, the point where you have to admit you lost him. Again. Just like you always lose him. To your own stupidity, to your shame and fear, because you were never meant to be that person, and then because you never believed you deserved to be loved, especially by him. And by the time Ian decided you were right, it was much too late to back out. You were lost. And now you keep losing. 

You need a place to stay before it gets dark – some place to lay low for a while and drown in the memory of pale skin and green eyes and soft hair that burns like fire beneath your fingertips when the light catches it, just so. 

You suck down on dry, chapped lips and think you can still taste him there, trapped in the cracks of rough, torn skin. It feels like someone died, like you died. Everything hurts. 

*** 

Two days. 

You find a shitty apartment. The first space that you've ever been able to call your own. It should feel like a victory, that you got this far, that you made it over the border, that you're surviving, until you remember whose money paid for that freedom, that gave you a chance, a choice. You could stretch out your arms to either side and almost touch the walls, it's so small, but without him here the space feels endless. 

*** 

Two weeks. 

You get a job. In a nightclub, behind the bar, where they don't ask too many questions. Cause if they do ask, you might ask back. You won't. Seems like everyone has something to hide out here, or something they need to run from. So you watch, you learn, grateful for all the wasted time spent hanging with the barfly's down the Alibi room waiting for Gallagher. 

You should ditch the car too, but something inside just screams no at the thought. It's the last place you smiled, laughed with him, fucked. Made love. And sometimes, in your head, you're still stuck there on the border – only this time he comes back. 'Get in assfuck', you say. 'What the hell took you so long.' 

Six months. 

You meet Em, Emilio at the club. He works the day shift in bakery down the old town, and nights at the club. He stays over sometimes, in your shitty apartment where the air con doesn't work. You smoke cigarettes on the balcony letting the night-breeze dry the sweat on your skin. His hair is dark, and you like the way it feels under your hands, curling like silk around your fingertips. His skin is hot and tastes sweet beneath the press of your lips, the colour of cinnamon. And you like the way he says your name. Meek-hay-lo. Each syllable separate and distinct. 

But you still keep his photo, folded into a careful square in your wallet. You look at it every day at first, and each time you do your stomach twists in actual physical pain. Until that time you wake up one morning, the heat from another body in your bed making you restless and sweaty and you can't remember the last time you looked at it, can't recall the exact shade of green of his eyes or the curve of his lips when he's trying not to smile at something stupid you said, or did. 

Is this what it feels like to let go, to move on? It makes something twist deep inside your gut again, and your fist punches hard into the flimsy plaster wall of the bathroom. Your knuckles split and bleed, but you feel alive, really alive for the first time in forever, remember fighting and fucking and bullets ripping through flesh. Shotgunning beers and lips that taste like copper. 

Em says nothing. He can sense the shadow over your heart – but the sex is still pretty good and he makes you laugh sometimes and that feels like enough for now. 

It has to be. 


	2. Ian

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> After Ian and Mickey said goodbye at the border, I couldn't bear to watch s7 ep12, and knowing how it panned out I'm glad I dodged that bullet. This chapter is angst and pining, but it always darkest before the dawn.

You stand there, barely breathing, barely moving at all until the car slides out of view in the shimmering haze of midday. You stand a little longer still, unwilling to move and break this tenuous connection that you imagine still exists between you both, because then it will be real, Mickey will be truly gone and you'll have to live with the guilt that you were the one who sent him off over the border alone. You made this happen, because Mickey always does whatever the hell you ask of him and plenty you never even thought to consider. He came out for you, chose you over his family, his wife, his child. And all Mickey ever asked in return was that you love him (you do, so much – those words could never be a lie, not ever – and his love was never in question, you know this), and all he got was hard time in jail and rejection. Again. 

But still, he kissed you, and the look in his eyes said the I love you even as his lips said 'fuck you Gallagher' and fingertips traced your jaw, scratching over your two-day old stubble. His eyes said _always,_ and you wanted, no, _you want_ to say it back to him just one last time because if these two days have shown you anything at all worthwhile, it's that Mickey Milkovich is it for you, for always. Period. Anything else, _anyone_ else is just smoke and mirrors. But the words got stuck in a throat too dry and tight with regret; with _sorry, please forgive me._

A car honks as it cruises by towards the border checkpoint and you snap back into awareness and sway where you stand, your body reminding you of it's weakness, of the reasons why you had to let him go and give him at least a fighting chance of carving out a life for himself without the baggage that you drag in your wake. There is a diner set back from the road where the Greyhound waits to take you back into the past, and you head there on auto, the need for food, meds, and coffee overwhelming in their intensity. You find a booth near the door where a cool breeze filters in, and you sit, slinging your bag in first, perched at the outer edge to discourage unwanted company. A waitress in red gingham hustles over with a practiced smile and sets down a pitcher of iced water. The tremors in your hands start up, and in your haste to pour a glass and down your meds before it all gets so much worse, you knock the glass and it skids across the oilcloth cover where she catches it deftly before it can crash to the floor. 'Let me, honey', she says, and if she stares just a beat too long at your red-rimmed eyes and cracked lips and shaking fingers you pretend not to notice. You rasp out a thanks, and she slides a full glass toward you and twirls off toward the counter for a laminated menu.  

Ten minutes pass, and just as you're starting to feel the right side up again, the waitress skirts past you again and slides a stacked plate of pancakes, rich with butter and dripping with syrup your way. 'Wrong order, going spare,' she says with a wink, then whispers, 'that shit works better with something to line your belly kid.' With barely enough cash for a bus ticket home you can't afford to turn down the offer of free food, but you don't regret it for one second, Mickey's need is greater than yours right now.  

You fret a little over video footage of a tall, pasty red-head and Chicago's most wanted then file it away in a box in your mind as settle back in your seat on the coach, fix ear-buds in and lean your forehead against the cool glass window. The beat of the mix-tape liberated from the glove-box of the four-by-four, before MIckey's cellmate fucked things up, drowns out the rumble of the engine. You almost miss it, but the flash of the screen catches at the corner of your vision and just for a second your heart soars and your pulses kicks hard and your so sure that it's him – it's Mickey.  

But when you hear the voice on the end of the line your world ends for the second time that day. 

The lies come easy after that. No one asks so you don't tell, even though you want to scream, yell, rail at them all. Don't they know you at all? Jesus Christ these people are your family, and not one of them can really _see_ you,even knows you were gone. Except the one who isn't here and never can be ever again.

She would know.  

But then someone does ask, and this time, to this person, you can't lie, you can't not say it. Hell, you won't _erase_ him like that this time. 

' _I was with Mickey,_ ' you say, and the words hang in the air, as you give them life, and there they stay - an impenetrable barrier between you.

And it's still there, unspoken, when he sits by your side clad in black some time later, pretending that he belongs with you. 

He doesn't, he never did.  

Frank talks, and the words wash over your mind without really taking on meaning, until he says ride or die, and the realization is like a punch to the gut, and you have to get out of there, now, fast.  

'Lets ride,' you'd said, the 'or die' unsaid but implicit, and then you went and broke that promise and broke both your hearts in the process. 

You should never have come back here, not if it was without him. 

That night, alone, you dream of heat and sand and the pounding of the surf against the shoreline. It all feels so real, but then you wake to the noise and stink of a city at dawn and tang of salt on your lips. 

 


End file.
